


Texture of Light

by partingxshot



Category: Wonder Woman (Movies - Jenkins)
Genre: (it doesn't work), F/F, Getting Together, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Canon, diana's love language is extremely dramatic speeches about worth and goodness, reciprocal hurt/comfort, so praise kink i guess, women nerding out about archaeology as a way to avoid talking about feelings. you know
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-28
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:41:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28388706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/partingxshot/pseuds/partingxshot
Summary: Diana can save the world as many times as it takes, but she has to go back to her day job eventually.That’s alright. Someone at the Smithsonian needs her.
Relationships: Diana (Wonder Woman)/Barbara Minerva
Comments: 36
Kudos: 488





	Texture of Light

“Aztec,” Barbara murmurs, slim fingers moving cautiously over the pitcher. It’s dyed turquoise, half from the touch of long-dead artisans and half from copper oxidation. Bird carvings soar across its base. “Pre-Columbian, at a guess. But barely.”

“That was my impression,” Diana says softly. She crosses her legs; grips the office chair beneath her. “But I thought I’d ask the expert.”

Barbara’s head dips further, her blonde hair a shield. Her eyes do not meet Diana’s, instead dragging from the pitcher to the stacks of paper on her desk to the yet-unrepaired floor tiles in the corner, where some unknowable conflict had happened during the Chaos of Wishes. Some petty fight between donors, or a final stand against a living museum magic that had been wiped away as quickly as it came.

Diana wonders if Barbara had seen any of it: ancient curses reinvented, or stolen artifacts standing up to walk out of the Smithsonian like they could cross the sea. She imagines Barbara would have a lot to say about that. She imagines the two of them could talk for hours. 

She blinks and re-centers herself. Carefully, she says, “You are the first person I thought to ask for help. That hasn’t changed.”

Barbara shakes her head minutely. “You know this stuff better than I do. You were—I mean, I think you were _alive_ in the fifteenth century.” She chances a glance through frizzing locks. “Am I right? Did—did I guess that right, about you?”

Her fingers do not shake, though her voice modulates—soft and tremulous, then bold—as randomly as a glitching phone system. “Never mind,” she says suddenly. “I don’t know why I—you don’t need to tell me anything. You _shouldn’t,_ really. I do—bad things, when I know things.”

Diana takes a sharp breath. She reaches across the desk to cup her hand over Barbara’s: two hands pressing together, and the pitcher beneath them. 

“That’s not true,” she says firmly. “You’ve done wonderful things with your knowledge. So many _incredible_ things, Barbara.”

Barbara shrugs beneath her thick sweater. “That’s what I’m good for.”

“That’s not what I meant. You have such a _light_ in you.” Diana swallows, her eyes tracing Barbara’s jawline—her chin and her forehead. The corners of her mouth, delicate. “A light that studies uncountable ages, and tells them like a story.” She squeezes the hand beneath her own. “The world would have suffered a terrible loss if that went out.”

“Wow,” Barbara says absently. “You really know what to say to a girl.” She doesn’t sound convinced.

Diana withdraws her hand, letting her fingers brush against Barbara’s wrist. “Let’s go out tonight. Wine.”

Barbara shakes her head. “I don’t—”

“Or, I know a coffeeshop that stays open until midnight. Novice guitarists play for tips. The results are...entertaining.”

“You don’t have to be nice to me,” Barbara warbles, something pinching at the base of her nose. Her eyes go glossy. “I’m just—I’m going to stay here, for awhile. This is—you know.” She shrugs through a watery smile. “This is where I belong.”

The walls of her office are bedecked with rich textures and spinning proud patterns. For the first time, Diana realizes that Barbara’s spent her time since the Chaos building herself a nest soft with textiles and bright with rare stones. A place that’s safe from the temptations and indignities of the outside world. Surrounded by the things she loves.

“Then let’s stay here for awhile,” Diana says solemnly. She tries to fit all the truth she can in the words, lasso or no. “I want to keep you company.”

“You really, really don’t have to—”

Diana stands. She leans over the desk. She presses her lips to Barbara’s forehead. 

Barbara stills beneath her, breath making small sounds like a captured animal in her chest. She grips her armrests.

Diana draws back far enough to cup Barbara’s face in her hands. “I want to know you, Barbara Minerva,” she says. “The texture of your light.”

Flushed red, Barbara nods.

Late that evening, they sit cross-legged together on the office floor, passing polished stones and small sculptures back and forth. A small bottle of white wine sits between them. Diana is barefoot, her strappy heels set neatly on Barbara’s unoccupied office chair. Barbara’s loose skirt flows over her crossed legs like a blanket, long enough to touch Diana’s toes when either of them rock forward to grab a new artifact.

“Marcus Mayfield at the British Museum insists this was a fertility totem.” Barbara’s nose is wrinkled, pink sparks of passion high on her cheeks. “But that’s stupid. That’s _so_ stupid. It’s like, every time one of those guys sees a carved boob they think, ‘Fertility totem!’ It’s super uncreative at best—”

“—and arrogant at worst,” Diana grins. She leans forward conspiratorially. “I wish I could show you art from Themyscira. You’d love it.”

“Uh, _yeah_ I would. Definitely. Just, hello, warrior woman culture _plus_ immortality? Time to—to learn everything there is to know about sculpture and get _really freaking good at it!_ God, the output must be incredible.”

“Mm.” The room’s taken on a hazy glow that has little to do with wine. 

Barbara’s watching her. Barbara, Diana knows, is usually watching her. But this time there’s an intensity—a careful openness—that hadn’t been there when they met. It’s an openness that _knows_ Diana. Has seen her weak and strong, and has not found her wanting.

“That...friend of yours,” Barbara says, and Diana’s glow fades. “He had...he was your wish, right?”

Diana presses her eyes shut. A cavern threatens to open inside of her, broad and dark as the emergency broadcast room had been. 

But by now, she’s familiar with the texture of the darkness. Its edges no longer eat her alive. 

“I’m sorry,” Barbara says, voice high and frantic. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have—”

“It’s alright,” Diana says softly. “He’d been—he was already gone. He’s been gone for a long time.”

Steve had told her there were others out there, for her. It feels like a disloyalty to believe him.

She feels a gentle pressure on her arm. 

When she opens her eyes, Barbara has moved closer, her knees planted in front of Diana’s crossed legs. Like this, she’s taller than Diana, but something in her posture is humble—curled inward and private between the two of them. Her blue eyes gleam behind round glasses; her skirt pools in Diana’s lap. She looks down at Diana’s face like a strange and glorious excavation.

“Is this okay?” she murmurs. “Just—just this.”

Diana nods.

Barbara takes a breath. “When I was doing my first PhD,” she says, “my advisor saw me doodling Aztec jaguar battle garb. She looked at my cheetah-print purse, said ‘oh,’ and laughed. Like she’d learned something about me.”

The ceiling light halos her blonde hair and softens the lines around her eyes. She says, “From then on, if I was freaking out about my thesis or whatever, she’d say, ‘Put on your jaguar battle jacket, Barb.’ Like it was that simple.”

Diana swallows. A winged thing beats against her ribcage, waiting to be ripped away. “Was it?”

Barbara sinks to her haunches, putting the two of them back on even ground. Her knees press against Diana’s ankles. “No,” she says carefully. “It’s—harder than that. To make yourself who you want to be. To—” She blinks rapidly. “To keep moving. After everything.”

A hematite elephant carving balances on thick back legs behind her. Beside it, rough amber outlines the shape of an elk. The pitcher Diana brought sits solemn on the desk above them, birds in flight.

“Maybe it has to do with time,” Barbara says.

“Most things do,” Diana tells her.

Experimentally, she cups Barbara’s chin in her hand. Barbara’s eyes drift closed, her lashes fluttering. 

Diana presses her fingertips into Barbara’s cheek. Then she draws them down to the space between her neck and her jawline—the soft impression beneath her ear. 

Barbara’s breath catches. Her pink lips part. 

Diana leans forward and presses her mouth to her collarbone. She cups the back of Barbara’s neck and murmurs, “You are a marvel. Never forget that. Never forget you were strong enough to shape yourself. To come home."

Barbara gasps a laugh, her pulse fluttering. “You don’t let up, do you?”

Diana’s hands wander downward. She clutches Barbara’s thin arms through her sweater, feeling skin and muscle there. 

Barbara squirms in her grip. “Better—better ration out that praise, or I’ll get”—she gasps again as Diana’s lips trail up the side of her neck—“I’ll get used to the positive reinforcement, and then how am I gonna function through my day-to-day mediocrity when a gorgeous goddess is _not_ trying—trying to make me—”

Diana presses her lips to Barbara’s. She tastes chapstick and salt and a texture of light. 

Barbara scrambles forward, straddling Diana’s lap. She lets Diana take her weight, and it presses down in good places. She kisses with a feline hunger, all sudden motions and untamed affection, teeth nipping and pulling exactly where they should. Diana loses breath after breath—like taking on the world. Like finding a third way out.

“You’re beautiful,” Barbara murmurs against her lips. “You’re unbelievable. You’re good.”

Diana drags them down to the floor together, Barbara’s skirt rumpled up between them. She pulls up Barbara’s sweater with one hand—with the other, she drags a line across the smooth skin beneath Barbara’s ribcage. 

“I’m not the only one.”

Barbara stills on top of her. “You don’t have to say that.”

Diana cranes her neck up and captures Barbara’s lips again. She kisses her, slow and deep as familiar ocean waters. Then she lets herself fall back to the floor, her hair spread out over Barbara's hands.

“The truth is important,” she says.


End file.
